Personnel in the Israel Defence Forces who served in tests of antidotes for anthrax, nerve gas, and other toxic substances will soon be protected under supervision of the health ministry.
Clinical trials in the military began more than 35 years ago and have continued to this day without the army’s medical corps informing the participants what pills they are given and the risks.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice on behalf of soldiers of various ages who took part in the unsupervised experiments without giving informed consent and complained that their health had deteriorated as a result.
The government told the judges that from now the military agrees to have such experimentation overseen by the health ministry, in the same manner as civilian medical experimentation is supervised. The ministry is in the process of preparing a government bill that will set down detailed rules to govern medical experiments, including those carried out by the military.
The doctors’ group expressed its satisfaction with the agreement, except for the state’s refusal to halt immediately all experimentation on soldiers and to allow its resumption only when the bill is passed in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. In the interim, a modified version of existing supervision procedures will apply to experimentation by the medical corps.
Military veterans who are now mostly in their 50s but were highly motivated new recruits in 1971 were among the petitioners to the high court. Then, eager to be admitted to elite fighting units, they agreed “voluntarily” to swallow daily dozens of pills for a few weeks. They were not told that the drugs had previously been tried only in laboratory animals and were an antidote for nerve gas and other wartime threats.
The veterans have since learnt that the antidotes, although given to soldiers in other armies only in emergencies, are not supposed to be taken for days at a time. The former Israeli soldiers claimed that if they refused to participate they would not have been accepted to the elite units, and if they did take part they would get a few weeks of leave.
The veterans recalled nausea, weakness, diarrhoea, and other symptoms after taking the pills and that their physical complaints were not followed up. Although they were in good health in their late teens, they began to note medical problems, such as arrhythmia, abnormal liver function, and breathing difficulties only a few years after their discharge from the military.
The medical corps has opened an office to hear the health complaints of participants in medical experiments; to tell them what substances were given to them; and to receive requests for disability payments.